Art in Review

By KAREN ROSENBERG

Published: September 18, 2009

JAMES TURRELL

PaceWildenstein

534 West 25th Street

Chelsea

Through Oct. 17

The idea of using holograms in art seems laughably dated or, at the very least, kitschy. (Dal?robably doomed the medium, in the early 1970s, with his holographic portrait of the rock musician Alice Cooper.) Not even James Turrell, the artist known for making light and space behave in mind- and mood-altering ways, is able to redeem them.

Mr. Turrell's 15 ''transmission light works'' are modeled after abstract paintings. They try, not quite successfully, to exorcise the hologram's hokey, representational associations while retaining a phenomenal quality. Wedges, halos and orbs of light appear to project or recede from mirrored supports. The most interesting examples are physically assertive, even threatening; knife points and lassos emerge with the slightest shift in position.

Other shapes are obliquely referential. One blue-green trapezoidal form recalls Mr. Turrell's ''skyspaces,'' open-ceilinged chambers meant to be viewed at dusk. Another, in the form of a long, tilted ellipse, hints at an old painterly illusion: the anamorphic skull in Holbein's ''Ambassadors.''

As a group, however, these works seem like oversize versions of the holograms used to secure credit cards and currencies. One suspects that they are just as functional: something to fill the gallery while Mr. Turrell finishes his site-specific installation, ''Roden Crater,'' in Arizona. KAREN ROSENBERG